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Whiteness
File:https://media.giphy.com/media/l1J9xE0j2KB0Jmjyo/giphy.gif Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_ethnic "White ethnic is a term used to refer to White Americans who are not Old Stock or White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.1 They consist of a number of distinct groups and make up approximately 9.4% of the United States population." "Examples of white ethnics include Italians,5 Irish,56 Russians, Poles, Spanish, Portuguese, Greeks, Hungarians, Slovaks, and Croats. Some researchers and scholars also consider Arabs, Jews,5 Armenians, and Middle Eastern Christians like Assyrians and Lebanese Maronite Catholics as white ethnic; but this is disputed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestant "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) is a term for an elite social class of powerful white Americans of British Protestantancestry. WASPs often trace their ancestry to the colonial period. The term is often used as a pejorative to attack their historical dominance over the financial, cultural, academic, and legal institutions of the United States." "Numbers of the wealthiest and most affluent American families ("Old Money"), such as the Vanderbilts and Astors, Rockefeller, who were Baptists, Du Pont, Roosevelt, Forbes, Whitneys, the Morgans and Harrimans are Episcopalian and Presbyterian families." Articles Having White Friends Comes With Trauma I’m Not Willing to Deal With Anymore - Erin White (Afropunk) "My dad warned me about White People when I was around 7 or 8. He told me that no matter how close I felt to these people, I would always be first and foremost Black in their mind. And at no time could a Black person rely on a White person to put their privilege on the side if it ever becomes a Me vs. Them situation. As a kid, this was, frankly, another one of my dad’s pessimistic, paranoid lectures. Be on the lookout at all times just…in case. And as an outgoing, compassionate human-being his words rolled off my back. But in time I’ve learned that Daddy-o was onto something and the ugly truth is that in one way or another, White friends, largely, just aren’t safe to have." "With every close relationship I’ve had with a White person, their unconscious but blatant biases against and misunderstandings of Black People, in particular, tends to reveal itself sooner or later. Unprompted and accepting admissions that their Good White parents aren’t racist but would never “let” them date a black person, the tokenizing, the microaggressions, and dismissals of Black pain. The emotional labor, the holding back, the shrinking required to put up with the willful ignorance and mismanaged guilt and resentment of White People is too much. And the fact of the matter is that I’m finding it impossible to trust any White Person to not, at some point, perpetuate ideologies that oppress me. Being friends with White People is just too fucking hard on my psyche." Are Arabs white? - Al Jazeera By Khaled A Beydoun, July 16, 2015 "Since 1944, Arabs have been deemed white by law. Many Arabs still embrace and defend that status today. However, the US Census Bureau has proposed a new stand-alone classification - "Middle East or North African MENA" - which if adopted on the 2020 Census, may formally end more than 70 years of formal whiteness, and the "racial Catch-22" that perplexes the Arab American identity." "Far from merely a racial designation, whiteness still stands as the paragon of social citizenship in the US and a gateway to a myriad of privileges. Socially constructed in opposition to blackness, whiteness remains eternally associated with prestige, power, access, and opportunity. Early Arab immigrants desperately pursued whiteness and performed it in immigration proceedings. The law officially mandated whiteness as a prerequisite for US citizenship until 1952. Key judicial decisions in 1915 and later 1944, solidified the legal designation that Arabs were white by law." "However, there is also a dark side to these statistics. Namely, equipping the department of homeland security and local police with more precise demographic data about Arab American households, blocks, and communities - in short, making surveillance easier and more incisive. On one hand, the end of Arab American ceremonial whiteness may mark a moment of racial progress - and on the other, may indicate racial retrenchment." For Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, Whiteness Was a Fragile Identity Long Before Trump - Forward By Sigal Samuel, December 6, 2016 "I have lived for 26 years under the illusion that I am unconditionally white…. Recently I have started looking at my face and going, ‘Oh man, do I look too Jewish?’” Sydney Brownstone, the reporter who voiced this question in a recent Blabbermouth podcast, is not alone in wondering this. Many Ashkenazi Jews who have always assumed that they’re white are noticing that they’re not white enough for Donald Trump’s white supremacists. Suddenly, they’re asking themselves: Wait, how white am I, exactly?" Category:White Culture Category:White Category:Race